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Value vs. Selling Points

by Alexander Repiev

Obscure Academic Notion vs. Effective Practical Tool, An Assay by Alexander Repiev

Unlike sciences, academic marketing is rife with obscure terms. Consider value, utility, USP, and selling points. They are close in meaning, but different in their abstractedness, scope, and applicability in marketing practice. For practical marketing purposes, the most suitable tool is selling points.

SELLING POINTS

The best selling points of a product, service, firm, or social idea are competitive advantages understood by the Client. Weaker selling points are descriptions of common benefits that are more riveting than those of the competitors (pre-emption). Sets of selling points for end users and resellers, or for decision-makers and their back-room boys, are different in principle. Selling points can be created, elaborated, and modified. Quite flexibly and productively.

Selling points can concern a product’s functionality, delivery, installation, service, storage, personnel, financial scheme, terms of supply, etc. They can be rational and emotional, open and confidential. A lower price can, quite logically, be a good selling point. One can also talk about the priority and number of selling points: “25 Selling Points for Vista.”

Selling points are not absolute. First, they only make sense in comparison with competitive offerings. Second, a today’s selling point may be dwarfed by competition tomorrow. Third, an argument can be an excellent selling point for one market; an insignificant one for another, and a disadvantage for yet another.

Selling points constitute the core of a client-oriented selling pitch and a marketing campaign.

VALUE

In economics and marketing, “value” is a buzzword, and even a piece of incongruous pseudo-math [1]:

“Customer value = Perceptions of benefits / Total cost of ownership; Customer value added = Perceived worth of the company offer / Perceived worth of competitive offers.”

(Characteristically, authors never supply examples of how to use BS like that in practice!)

What is value?

John Ramsay of the UK [2], [3] enquires: “… is it physical or mental, abstract or concrete, monetary or psychic?… The value chain metaphor appears to be entirely misleading.” I agree with Ramsay: “Value appears to be an abstract mental phenomenon and therefore it cannot be delivered, or offered, or received… Consequently it cannot be passed along from department to department.”

There is also a point of semantics. We mostly associate the notion of value of things with their monetary value. However, less monetarily valuable products may outsell more monetarily valuable ones, thus being more “valuable” in marketing terms.

More important, marketing is about selling a product in a competitive environment, where the product has to “out-value” the competition in the eyes of the Client, who compares products, searching for interesting distinctions. However, the concept of “value” offers him no grounds for comparison.

By contrast, even in a fairly commoditized product a gifted marketer can identify some advantageous differences and convey them to the Clients as selling points (cheaper, more economical, productive, etc.).

It follows that in the world of prevailing commoditization it is more important not to add some abstract value, but rather to create value differences (selling points) that can move the Client.

The term “value” is thus too vague and too irrelevant to be employed as a useful tool in marketing practice.

UTILITY

Sometimes, they use the notion of utility. It is perhaps closer to a Client’s rational needs, but it seems unrelated with the emotional side of his purchasing decisions. Besides, it gives no indication as to a product’s price and is not concerned with sales.

By the way, it would be interesting to read explanations of the “utility” of cigarettes, high heels, silicon breasts, extreme sports, etc. Yet, a skilled marketer can sell these products employing selling points.

UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION (USP)

At first sight, the idea of selling points is similar with that of the USP (Unique Selling Proposition, or Unique Selling Point). However, the USP concept has a couple of critical flaws.

Its author Rosser Reeves believed that there should be ONLY ONE proposition. He reasoned that an average person could only remember one item in an advertisement. But it has long been shown that the more a Client learns about the product, the easier it is for him to make his buying decision. It is this, by the way, that accounts for the success of advertising copy packed with selling stuff. In personal sales, a good salesperson provides ALL the advantages of a product, as does a properly crafted description of a product in the Internet.

Reeves also held that “the proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions.” The proposition must be so strong that it can SELL. Sell to one person, or to an organization, or… to millions.

ADVANTAGES OF THE CONCEPT OF “SELLING POINTS”

In comparison with the notions just considered, the idea of “selling points” offers obvious practical advantages in marketing. Selling points cover more ground than the USP. Unlike value, the notion of selling points is concrete, like in this example: “Maximize the VALUE of your home … Creating extra storage space can be a great SELLING POINT… Modern treble glazing can be a SELLING POINT.”

In able hands, rational and emotional selling points are excellent practical tools in sales, talks, and communications. An advert containing no selling points is void. Incorporating the best selling point into a headline dramatically improves the efficiency of a document. And so on.

The idea of selling points enables a product to be “sold” in a more refined manner. A marketer can shift accents, introduce new points and hone old ones to suit a given situation. Analyzing a set of selling points, a Client may arrive at a compromise: one or several selling points may so impress him that he may ignore some flaws of the offering.

To conclude, the concept of selling points is more functional, flexible, and clear than the concepts of value and USP. This fine tool can work wonders in the hands of a creative marketer and adman.

DOWN WITH “VALUE”

It is high time for marketing academia to relinquish the use of the obscure and troublesome notion of value and to replace it by the “marketingly” meaningful and flexible notion of selling points.

Well, if only academics want their learned writings to be at least of some use for rough-and ready practitioners, of course.

The issue of selling points, including the practical aspects of their identification, their relation with the buying criteria and informed needs, is discussed at length in my book “Marketing Thinking, or Clientomania.” [4]. I have reworked the text for the second edition and can send its electronic version for comments. It is basically what I teach and use in my consulting work.

REFERENCES

1. Philip Kotler, “Marketing Management Millennium Edition,” Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2002

2. John Ramsey,

3. John Ramsay,

4. Alexander Repiev,

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